Now that the House has narrowly passed the Waxman-Markey energy and global warming bill, it is up to Senate Democrats to either take up the bill or pass their own legislation. They are more likely to do the latter.
While Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Friday praised the House-passed bill as “a courageous step toward a safer and cleaner energy future,” in the next sentence he noted that the bill is “not perfect.”
When asked about the House bill, Reid said he was “extremely concerned” the legislation did not include a provision to create an electricity “smart grid” which would help deliver power throughout the country from renewable sources (though it does include provisions that would help develop one).
The Senate is working separately on an energy bill that calls for more energy to come from renewable sources and it opens up more areas in the Gulf of Mexico to drilling. But the Senate has yet to come up with a bill to address so-called climate change, in part because of a failed attempt in 2005 to bring a bill to the Senate floor that would have capped greenhouse gas emissions.
The main component of the House bill is a cap and trade system that would limit carbon emissions and charge those who pollute beyond the cap to purchase costly permits.
Democratic Senators have recently been conferring with House members, trying to figure out how to build support for cap and trade in Senate, where most Republicans and many centrist Democrats oppose the idea and will be much harder to persuade otherwise.
“I think it’s possible,” Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said of moving a cap and trade bill. “If we come out of the House with a strong coalition that translates into strong coalition building in the Senate, then we can.”
The House bill passed with 219 votes, one more than the 218 needed, with nearly every Republican voting against it as well as a large block of Democrats. Democrats were worried enough about their ability to pass the bill that they requested Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I., to temporarily leave the rehabilitation program he had entered to return to the House floor for the vote.
Reid said the Senate is moving at a much slower speed than the House on passing a comprehensive energy bill, but added that he hopes to combine energy and climate bills in a single piece of legislation the Senate would be ready to vote on in the fall.
